Cineuropa Prize at the 30th Trieste Film Festival.Ognjen Glavonić's The Load is an artistically excellent treatment of one generation's view of how its predecessors, whether actively or passively, destroyed lives and societies in the Balkans, by a first-time filmmaker who possesses the talent and creativity to transcend judgment and achieve catharsis.

CANNES 2018 Directors’ FortnightReview: The Loadby Vladan Petkovic

13/05/2018 - CANNES 2018: Ognjen Glavonić's first fiction feature is a stark look at a war crime from the Kosovo War and its implications, with Leon Lučev giving an amazing performance in the main role.Serbian filmmaker Ognjen Glavonić's first fiction feature, The Load , has just world-premiered in the Cannes Directors’ Fortnight. Following up on his 2016 Berlinale Forum documentary Depth Two [+], this road drama with strong thriller elements picks up on the same subject of a war crime from the Kosovo War in 1999, during the NATO bombing of Yugoslavia.However, while Depth Two was chock-full of information, in The Load, Glavonić forsakes it in favour of an atmospheric piece that implies much more than it shows, focusing on truck driver Vlada (Croatian star Leon Lučev), who is taking a cargo of a nature unknown to him from Kosovo to Belgrade.From the moment Vlada picks up the truck at a compound in Kosovo until he drops it off in Belgrade, DoP Tatjana Krstevski's camera is mostly pointed at the driver in his truck cabin and his face, which tells of his inner anguish and pain in response to his situation, but also his memories and the questions that this situation is forcing him to ask himself. He does not know what it is he is transporting, but the secrecy in which he has to operate, having been told not to stop anywhere before he reaches his destination, tells him his load is not simple, everyday goods. However, Vlada has a family to feed during a war, and this is his absolute top priority.

On the way, he will pick up a teenage hitchhiker, Paja (Pavle Čemerikić), who is on his way to a better life in Germany. Paja knows the road and helps to navigate when it is blocked by a burning car. A document in a blue envelope given to Vlada by his employers quickly sends a police officer who stops them running for the hills while apologising profusely.Paja is also a kind of stand-in for Glavonić's generation, which grew up during the war. Paja had a punk band, something that kids in Serbia were still doing in the 1990s, and he plays a song to Vlada, who has a teenage son back at home. This segment adds the crucial generational context to the film, as does a side story about a lighter given to Vlada by his father, who fought in the Second World War. But make no mistake: there is no sentimentality in Glavonić's stark and inevitably dark film. With a washed-out, grey-beige colour palette and the decaying houses, muddy soil and rusty cars strewn along the road, the tone the filmmaker goes for is very low – almost the growl of a wounded, but dangerous, animal.Throughout the film, the war remains in the background – in the beginning, we can see the flares of anti-aircraft missiles over the hills in the distance, but we barely hear their sound. In contrast with Depth Two and its fact-based investigation of the war crime, in The Load, Glavonić gives us a picture of society and the destiny of real human beings during a war, as well as his own take on what his generation inherited from the previous one.The greatest accomplishment of the film is how it manages to transmit all of these issues to the audience through such scarce means. And this took a very special actor in the main role: it is Lučev's almost unbelievable performance that makes the execution of Glavonić's vision not only possible, but remarkably clear.The Load was co-produced by Serbia's Non-Aligned Films, France's Cinéma Defacto, Croatia's Kinorama and Iran's Three Garden Films. Warsaw-based New Europe Film Sales has the international rights.

CANNES 2018 Directors’ FortnightOgnjen Glavonić • Director of The Load“Paths are made by walking”by Vladan Petkovic

12/05/2018 - CANNES 2018: Serbian filmmaker Ognjen Glavonić tells us about how his first fiction feature, The Load, came into beingSerbian filmmaker Ognjen Glavonić is competing in the Cannes Directors’ Fortnight with his first fiction feature, The Load [+], which tackles a crime from the Kosovo War that he first visited in his documentary Depth Two , but in a very different way. Glavonić tells Cineuropa about how the two films came into being and influenced each other.Cineuropa: Why did you decide to tell this particular story, and in two films? Why is it so important to you?Ognjen Glavonić: The subject matter that I'm dealing with is still conspicuously absent from the public discourse. I wasn't curious just about the theme of the crime and the silence surrounding it; I was interested in the possibility of telling the story in what I think is an exciting way.Depth Two came out of research I did for The Load, and it was made when I realized that it was impossible to force the huge amount of material I had found into a fiction film, because that's not where it belongs. Eventually, Depth Two changed The Load from what I had originally imagined. I modified the script and shifted the focus to other things, changing the context to avoid any repetition. I wanted this film to be a personal reflection, an amalgam of my memories and research, which often collided with each other.

I wanted to emphasize the significance of a conversation about responsibility, instead of looking for alibis and pointing fingers at the "Other". I think it's necessary for cinema to speak to, as Pasolini put it, young fascists, those who are on the way to becoming ones – to educate them, teach them, jolt them out of their delusions and crack the national mythomania. A film should be a mirror of society, whatever the reflection we get.

This film is as much about the city, government and society that I am now living in as it is about the one I grew up in. But it is also about Yugoslavia and its remains, about the lessons that we can learn from it and its dissolution, and about my growing up and experiences during the NATO bombing. Above all, this is a film about what kind of inheritance a generation leaves to the next one. It's about stories that people did not want, or were not brave enough, to tell. This is the first step through the jungle of noise and lies, and as Kafka says, paths are made by walking.

How did you arrive at this form for the film, with very little actual war in it and a focus on one character?I never thought about The Load as a war film, and nor did I want to make an action film. For me, it was an intimate, personal drama, where we feel the consequences of the war more in the face of the main character, rather than around him. It was also always supposed to be a story about him discovering not only what’s in the back of his truck but, through that, some truths about himself as a human being.

I wanted people to get this feeling of a war being fought in the background and an overwhelming danger looming somewhere nearby. I didn’t want hundreds of different shots and camera angles; it was more important to spend time with the character and the sound of the truck, to see what he sees and to feel what he feels. Through his senses, I wanted to show how my country looked at that time, without explaining the context too much or distributing information, messages and theses. I wanted to show the metaphysical, inner journey of my character, but also a society at a very specific moment of its decay.

How did you pick Leon Lučev for the main role?I chose Leon after I saw him portray very different characters in several good films. We started working on the movie three years before we started shooting, and the experience he brought not only to his own character and the film itself, but also to the actual shoot, gave me, a distracted young director, a sense of security. Thanks to him, I started to believe that perhaps everything would turn out fine in the end.

In addition, his actors Antonio de la Torre, who plays the lead role (and who was absent from the ceremony), and Luis Zahera, performing in a supporting role, were triumphant in their respective categories. All in all, five Feroz Awards were bestowed upon this corruption-themed thriller that was first presented at the most recent San Sebastián Film Festival. The movie has so far grossed almost €1.5 million, and was co-produced (with France) by Atresmedia Cine and Tornasol Films, among other outfits. Gerardo Herrero, a seasoned industry professional who heads up the latter company, was clearly moved as he took to the microphone and dedicated his award to young producers. He also urged those present to continue supporting excellent films – as exemplified by two of his rivals, Carmen & Lola and Journey to a Mother’s Room.

As a matter of fact, one of the actresses in the latter film, Anna Castillo, picked up the Best Supporting Actress Award (which she dedicated to her colleague on the Celia Rico film, Lola Dueñas): the Catalonian thesp actually pulled off a double win on Saturday night, as she also collected the Feroz for Best Supporting Actress in a TV Series, Arde Madrid, produced by Movistar + and directed by Paco León, which was also considered to be the Best Comedy Series and saw its lead, Andalusia’s Inma Cuesta, pick up a gong.

Quién te cantará, the third movie by Carlos Vermut, which previously won the Feroz Award at the most recent edition of the San Sebastian Film Festival, garnered four prizes: Best Poster (designed by Vermut himself), Best Trailer, Best Soundtrack (composed by Alberto Iglesias, a musician who regularly works on the films of Pedro Almodóvar) and Best Lead Actress for Eva Llorach, who, after also scooping the Forqué Award a few days ago, is clearly on course for victory at the Goyas, which will be handed out on 2 February.

At the ceremony presented by actress Ingrid García-Jonsson – which was more entertaining and spirited than proceedings usually are at events like this, and which was fuelled by an abundance of alcohol, some savage humour and a handful of indelicate remarks – the Special Feroz Award was bestowed upon Between Two Waters, a film helmed by Isaki Lacuesta; the Honorary Feroz Award (with a huge accompanying round of applause) upon the great José Luis Cuerda (“my film teacher”, as he was described by Alejandro Amenábar, who handed him the statuette); the Best Documentary Feroz upon the film Notes for a Heist Film by León Siminiani; and the Best Comedy Feroz upon Champions by Javier Fesser. The ceremony unfolded before the gaze of around 3,000 people who attended the gala, plus guests such as the mayor of Bilbao, Juan Mari Aburto, the director of the ICAA, Beatriz Navas, and the president of the Spanish Academy of Film Arts and Sciences, director Mariano Barroso (who, incidentally, was nominated for his TV series El día de mañana).

24/01/2019 - Cineuropa ha incontrato Emir Kusturica durante il 12° Küstendorf Film and Music Festival per discutere le sue preoccupazioni sul futuro del cinemaAt the 12th Küstendorf Film and Music Festival, Cineuropa met up with its founder and head, Serbian director Emir Kusturica, to talk about several recent phenomena that need to be acknowledged, and how they may affect the future of the cinema.

Cineuropa: At this year’s edition of Küstendorf, the motto of which ("The perfect dozen") is all about perfection, in your inaugural speech, you voiced quite a few concerns.Emir Kusturica: Those are the questions and themes that I think are relevant to the continuation of the cinema today. I am positive that the cinema is going to survive. The only thing is that we don't know in which way, and for those people who are very attached to theatres, as I am, it is unsettling to see that the future of film is home cinema, movies on television or cineplexes, and that we are going to lose this kind of passion, or that it will be killed off by the market. This is why festivals are important: they will remain the principal supporter of the classical way of screening films. Even the language of the auteurs now seems to be compromising, visually and formally, between the theatrical format and the fact that a film will be watched on other screens.

You talked about the electronic image, scrolling and ads as worrisome adversaries for the cinema. Small-screen-native content in general seems to have imposed a more linear and simplistic type of narration.

Ads are awful because they kill the perception of time, and if you look at good movies like Dogman or Happy as Lazzaro [screened as part of the Contemporary Trends programme and followed by workshops], you can see that they operate with time, in two different ways. The style of a great director is in fact defined by the way they work with space and time. Unfortunately, I don't know to what extent these films will succeed in cinemas. Today, I don't believe that you can make it when you’re up against all the movies that are produced for multiplexes, unless you have a stupid Hollywood-type story conceived to please the masses worldwide, supported by aggressive advertising to create that audience.

The language of commercial cinema has been simplified, and the length of time that every artist has to reach the audience is short. Take the French-Belgian movie we screened here, Close Enemies: what a good film! I was amazed when I saw it! And also shocked, because for me, this incredible film is as close as it gets to having the best possible chance of reaching a huge audience, and yet it didn't reach it, and this is a dangerous sign for the future. More and more movies will get made as time goes on, but unfortunately, more and more good movies will go undiscovered. Back in 1985 and 1995, when I presented movies at Cannes, it was possible to be well received both by the critics and in theatres, but it is difficult to gain acceptance from both nowadays.

So there was a rift? Do you see a glimmer of hope that this situation will be resolved in years to come?What I have noticed is that there is no way for the movies I love the most to get close to the audience, to be artistic and commercial at the same time. Now the public is divided: auteur and mainstream films are two separate things. Zhang Yimou recently told me, "I've just done a commercial movie; now I'm going back to art." When I was growing as a filmmaker, the best approach was to combine both, but today I don't think it's possible. The problem, with human history as well as culture, is that however clear your vision of the conditions that the future will be built on may be, you cannot predict it. The way cinema will develop cannot be predicted, especially not on the basis of the good movies that you see. What dominates is the cinema that people accept and, in a way, expect. An American sociologist named Stark said something that made a big impression on me: that the perfection of the image has been substituted for God, and that we are not moving towards a holy trinity, but rather towards ourselves. We have become part of an ideology, or part of an advertisement of some kind.

In spite of it all, you ended your speech with a universal, simple and pure definition of what a good film is: one that speeds up the heart rate.I mentioned I was amazed and in shock after seeing Close Enemies, but Happy as Lazzaro, too, is the work of a very talented director, influenced by the best traditions from different periods in Italian cinema: Antonioni, Rossellini, De Sica, with his need to show that there are, in this world, some people who are so good that they are invincible, and could be the heroes of our time. The perfection of this film lies in Alice Rohrwacher's political engagement and her ideas about life, which are very strong.